Information

RESOURCES

SUCCESS STORY

Custom Stone Formliner for Navy Pier Garage

The 1995 renovation of Navy Pier brought
a children's museum, an amusement park,
restuarants, shows and expos to the facility.
It also brought crowds that quickly filled up
the existing underground parking garage. To
ease the parking problems, the City of Chicago
decided to build a new multi-level above pier
garage adding 700 parking spaces.

Included in the design of the building was
consideration for sound-deadening properties.
Because a concert stage is located near
the garage, the parking structure surface was
designed to shield residents in the nearby
Lake Point Tower condominiums from unwanted
noise.

After an accoustical engineer determined that
a combination of rough and smooth textures
in high relief would minimize the sound disturbance,
the architectural firm then began inquiries
with formliner manufacturers. Symons®
by Dayton Superior was chosen because of
superior experience with custom designs.

The first step in creating the formliner was
chiseling the stones that would be used to
crate the formliner mold. John Gast, the
stone mason chosen for this project, chipped
away at various sized stones to achieve the
desired texture. After that, a set of master
molds were created. In this case, molds ranging
from 2'x2' to 3'x6' were made. Sizes that
were used repeatedly had several molds made
with slight variations to achieve a natural look
in the finished concrete.

Job Superintendent Rich Phelan was concerned
about creating an appropriate surface
for the structure. He felt that “bugholes”
and other concrete imperfections
would interfere with the architect's intention
to create a cut stone appearance. With vibration
guidlelines provided by Symons, he reports that “the result looked more like cut
stone than poured concrete”.

Carpenter Foreman Tom Reidy was also impressed
with the results. He remarked, “I’ve
worked with all different types of liners from
virtually every manufacturer. Nothing compares
to the performance of these liners.”

The architect was also very happy with the
outcome. He reports that another formliner
manufacturer even expressed amazement at
the excellent results produced.